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Strawberry Marmalade
Pick ripe strawberries free from hull; to a pound of fruit put three-quarters of a pound of sugar; mash them together in a smooth mass; put them in a kettle over a gentle fire; stir with a wooden spoon, and cook. until it is jelly-like and thick; cool a little, and if it thickens up like jelly, it is done. Then put in small jars or tumblers, and cover with paper as directed above.
A plain uncooked-pectin jam: fruit and sugar reduced until it sets on its own. The whole recipe hangs on judging the set, since no thermometer or pectin is mentioned.
- The ratioThree-quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of hulled fruit is roughly 1 1/2 cups sugar to 3 cups berries. That is slightly less sugar than the pound-for-pound proportion common in preserving books, so the mass depends on evaporation rather than sugar concentration to reach a set.
- Judging doneness"Jelly-like and thick" is the cold-plate test in other words: put a saucer in the freezer, drop a teaspoon of the hot marmalade on it, and push it with a finger after a minute. It should wrinkle rather than run. On a thermometer this is 220F at sea level.
- Strawberries have no pectin to speak ofStrawberries are low in pectin -- They are among the weaker-setting fruits, so expect a long, slow reduction and a soft set. A squeeze of lemon juice, or a handful of slightly underripe berries, adds acid and pectin.
- The kettleA "kettle" in preserving chapters of this period usually means a large open pan rather than a covered pot. Width helps here: evaporation is what thickens this, and a deep narrow pot is more likely to scorch at the bottom before the mass reduces.
- "A gentle fire"The recipe asks for gentle heat throughout, which suits a mash that catches easily. In modern practice cooks often raise the heat to a steady boil once the sugar has dissolved and the fruit has released its juice, to shorten the time on the stove; either way it wants frequent stirring.
- Wooden spoonSpecified for a reason worth keeping: a wooden handle stays cool to hold and the spoon will not scratch the lining of the pan.
- Sealing"Cover with paper as directed above" refers to an earlier passage not reproduced here; paper covers, sometimes dipped in spirit, and later paraffin were the usual period closures, none of them reliable by modern standards. Fill sterilised jars, seal with two-piece lids, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes, or simply keep it in the refrigerator and use within a month.
- YieldThe recipe sets a ratio rather than a quantity. If you scale it to two pounds of berries and 1 1/2 pounds of sugar, expect roughly three half-pint jars, less if you cook it hard.
"Marmalade" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks did not always mean citrus; it could mean any fruit crushed and cooked to a thick, spreadable mass, the word being generally traced to the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste. Some books of the period draw a distinction of texture, though not consistently: jelly is strained juice, jam is whole or broken fruit in syrup, and marmalade is the fruit reduced until it is uniform and cuts clean. Strawberries were the first real fruit of the season across much of the country and arrived all at once, which may be why preserving chapters like this one deal with them so briskly. The lower sugar ratio here, three-quarters rather than pound for pound, is often said to reflect a household economy in which sugar was still the expensive part of the jar, and it would explain the recipe's insistence that you cook until the mass thickens rather than to any fixed time.}